Divided in Death

“That plays.” She began to re-evaluate. “Okay, that plays. He goes through money, he needs more money. A big score.”

“So he kills Felicity and his brother to get it, implicates me? You’re painting a monster. I wasn’t married to a monster.”

“You were married to an illusion.”

Reva’s head jerked back as if the blow had landed. “You’re grabbing at air because you don’t have anything else. And because you don’t want to leave me with nothing. I loved him, whether or not he was an illusion. Do you understand the concept?”

“I’m familiar with it.”

“You want me to believe I loved someone capable of murder. Cold-blooded, cold-minded murder.”

It took all her will to keep her gaze from flicking, even for an instant, toward Roarke. And to keep her heart and mind from asking herself that same question.

“What you believe is your own business. How you handle this is up to you. If you can’t deal with the direction of my investigation, you’re no use to me.”

“You’re the cold-blooded one. The cold-minded one. And I’ve been used just about enough.”

When she strode out, Tokimoto eased away from the door and followed her.

“Gee, she took that well.” Now Eve allowed herself a slow scan of faces. “Would anyone like to complete this briefing, or should we break for comments about my need for sensitivity training?”

“It’s a hard knock, Dallas,” Feeney said. “No way for you to pretty it up for her. She’ll be back when she shakes it off.”

“We’ll work without her. Bissel has accounts in various locations, odds are he’s got a bolt-hole-a lavish one, maybe more than one. He’s still in the city, cleaning up after himself, so he must have one here. We find it.”

“I found two properties,” Roarke put in. “One in the Canary Islands, the other in Singapore. Neither were very well cloaked, meaning if I found them so easily, others would.”

“So they’re probably blinds. He’s not completely stupid. Let’s look in his brother’s name, or Kade’s, Ewing’s. He might have set himself up, using them as cover, then if… No, no. Shit! McCoy. Chloe McCoy. He had to have more use for her than the occasional bang. Check it out. See if he tucked away funds and/or property in her name somehow. He killed her for a reason, and my take is this guy kills for money and self-preservation.”

“I’ll take that,” McNab volunteered. “Working on a cobbler rush.”

“Get started. I’m going to check on Sparrow, see if he’s coherent and I can dig anything out of him. Feeney, I’m leaving you and Roarke on the machines. If Reva’s backed out and Tokimoto’s busy patting her head, you’re going to be shorthanded.”

“Another tanker of coffee ought to keep us in the game.”

“You may want an update before you rush off, Lieutenant. We’re retrieving data from Kade’s unit. It’s encrypted, but we’ll get through that.”

“Great, good. Let me know when-”

“I’m not finished. Each of Kade’s units was corrupted, but not through a networking worm. They were burned individually.”

“So what? Look, this is EDD territory. All I need is the bottom line. I need the data.”

“You don’t give electronics enough respect,” Feeney stated.

“And neither, I’d venture, does Bissel.” As Eve hadn’t touched the glass of chilled juice Peabody had brought her, Roarke picked it up and helped himself. “The potential worm’s import is its theoretic ability to corrupt an entire networking system, however small or large, however simple or complex, with one stroke, to corrupt and shut down, irretrievably. That’s not what we’re dealing with. It’s a shade of that, an early version perhaps, but not nearly as powerful as we’ve been led to believe. It’s been relatively easy to clean and retrieve from the units we’ve got.”

“Relatively.” Feeney rolled his aching eyes. “It’s nasty business, but it’s not global security shit. What it is, is smoke.”

“Which means he doesn’t have what he thought he had-what he was going to parlay into a nice retirement fund. But maybe someone else does, or maybe… Son of a bitch. He wasn’t trying to take me out.” She tapped her fingers absently over her bruised eye. “He hit his target. Aim was a little off, but he hit.”

Roarke inclined his head as his thoughts marched with hers. “Sparrow.”

“It’d help to have somebody on the inside, somebody with some juice who could adjust or create data in-house. And provide protection. Sparrow. He’s the organized thinker. The pla

“Why not just kill Bissel then?” Peabody asked.

“Because you need a contingency. You need a fall guy. He set the putz up. Still the delivery boy. Bissel goes to deliver the worm disc to the high bidder, and it’s not the deal. He gets the shaft. Now he’s a dead man, a desperate one. He’s ru

“I imagine he pla

“Should’ve moved on that sooner rather than later, and he wouldn’t be in the hospital. I think he forgot to factor one vital element into the equation. When somebody like Bissel starts killing, it gets easier every time.”

She pulled out her communicator. “I want a block on Sparrow. I don’t want anybody, not even the medicals, talking to him until I get my shot. Start reeling in that data.”

“Hook up that tanker of coffee,” Feeney reminded her, then headed out.

“I need a moment, Lieutenant.” Roarke glanced at Peabody. “A private one.”

“I’ll wait outside.” Peabody slipped out, shut the door.

“I don’t have time to go into personal business,” Eve began.

“Sparrow has access to your data, to what happened in Dallas. If you’re right about all of this, he might very well use it against you. Make it public, even altering it in some way that twists the truth.”

“I can’t worry about that.”

“I can make it disappear. If you want that… element removed, I can remove it. You’re entitled to your privacy, Eve. You’re entitled to be secure that your own victimization won’t be used to draw speculation, gossip-and the pity you’d hate more than either.”

“You want me to give you the nod to tamper with government files?”

“No, I want you to tell me if you’d prefer those files didn’t exist. Hypothetically.”

“Which would let me off the hook. Legally. I wouldn’t be an accessory if I just made a little wish, and poof. This is a hell of a day. This is a hell of a fu

Because emotion was flooding her throat again, she turned away. “You and me, we haven’t been this far apart from each other since the begi

“You don’t see me, Eve. When you look at me, you don’t see the whole of me. Maybe I’ve preferred that.”

She thought of Reva, of illusions, and a mockery of a marriage. Nothing could be further from what they were dealing with. Roarke had never lied, nor pretended to be something other than what he was. And she had seen him, right from the first moment.

“You’re wrong, and you’re stupid.” There was more weariness than temper in the words, and as such struck him more forcefully. “I don’t know how to get through this. I can’t talk to you about it, because it just circles. I can’t talk to anyone else, because if I tell them what’s ripping at us, it makes them an accessory. You think I don’t see you?”